Top 200 art collector and National Gallery of Art trustee Mitchell Rales has donated $116 million to permanently endow the museum's 'Across the Nation' lending program. The initiative loans artworks from the National Gallery's collection to regional museums across the United States, covering all associated costs.
This transformative gift ensures the program's longevity, significantly expanding public access to a national collection that is largely held in storage. It reinforces the institution's mandate to serve the entire country, not just its Washington, D.C. base, and sets a major precedent for philanthropic support of arts access and distribution on a national scale.